The Last House Guest(75)

My car was in the driveway of Sunset Retreat, facing out. But it looked like someone had driven across the yard: tire tracks revved all the way down to the dirt below. I imagined a bottleneck of vehicles and someone impatient, driving around everyone else.

The front door of the Blue Robin across the way was ajar, a darkness beckoning.

I stepped across the threshold, taking it all in. The air pulsed, like the house was alive.

There were half-empty bottles on the counters, the ticking of a fan set too high, the stench of sweat and spilled liquor. And the candles, burned down to the wick, wax pooling at the base. Most had extinguished themselves, but there was one burning by the back window, set just below the web of cracks. I blew it out, watching as the smoke drifted upward, seeing the night fragmented through the glass.

Upstairs, there were several jackets remaining on the bed in the first room. And a shoe, of all things.

My fingers twitched with misplaced energy. There was too much out of my control. Too much I could never change.

I pulled out my phone and called the cleaning company. Told them to come as soon as they could and to send me the bill directly; I didn’t want this to go to the Lomans right now. I didn’t want them seeing it, the reckless mess we were making as their daughter was dying.

Downstairs, I threw the bathroom towels into the washer, dark with grime. But that was the benefit of white towels, white sheets—the open, airy feel of a place, the cleanliness. It was an easy illusion to maintain with a half-cup of bleach.

In the bedroom, the chest with extra blankets was open, but nothing seemed missing or used—just a stack of folded quilts—so I eased it shut.

And then, feeling more myself the more I took control, I found the number for the window company and left a message. That we would need a replacement for a damaged window at 3 Overlook Drive, and to call me when they needed access to measure.

After, I pulled the front door shut but didn’t lock it—I didn’t have the keys. I’d have to come back and check up on things after the cleaning.

I walked across the street to my car, and my eyes burned. Every place I stepped, everything I saw, was a place that Sadie would never be and never see. Even my car felt vaguely unfamiliar to me now. The granules of sand below the driver’s seat, which had been there for who knew how long—but all I could see was Sadie, brushing off her legs after a bonfire at Breaker Beach. The papers stuffed into the door compartment, and I pictured her balling up a receipt, stuffing it out of sight. My sunglasses wedged into the visor, and I saw her lowering the shade to check the mirror, saying, God, could I be any paler?

I couldn’t shake the scent of the house as I drove. The liquor, the sweat, something almost animal about it. So I kept the windows down, let the fresh air of Littleport roll in.

I drove in the opposite direction, toward the winding mountain roads, where the sun cast a pattern through the trees as the wind blew, like an incoming eclipse.





SUMMER


?????2018





CHAPTER 26


I was standing outside the bed-and-breakfast after Faith disappeared inside. I was glued to my spot, trying to process what she’d just told me. Another car had turned up the night of the party—and Sadie had been inside.

Sadie had been right here a year earlier, stepping out of a car in the parking lot of the B&B, walking the path to the party. I looked into the trees down the path, imagining her ghost.



* * *




I DROVE BACK TOWARD the Sea Rose, needing to be alone, to think. Everything I’d believed about that night was wrong. Could everything I’d thought about Sadie be wrong, too?

Over the years, our lives had become so tangled, pieces of each other indecipherable. The details blurring and overlapping. My home was her home, keys on each other’s rings, her thumb pressed to the front of my phone, the same tattoos—or was it a brand?

And yet how had I missed that she was there? She had arrived at the party. But somehow she’d ended up back on the cliffs behind her house, washing up on Breaker Beach. How?

I edged the car away from downtown, looping around the side roads to avoid the traffic, before cutting back toward the coast and the Sea Rose. All along, the night played over in my mind. The things I had told the police and the things I hadn’t.

Faith taking a swing at Parker outside, breaking the window. Connor arguing with Faith in the shadows after, by the time Luce came to find me. The bedroom door had been locked. I’d wanted to find the tape in the bathroom to secure the window, but someone else had been in there. I’d slammed my hand on the bedroom door, but no one answered.

Had Sadie been in that room when I’d pounded on the door? I’d found her phone in the house—in that very room. Maybe no one had moved it there. Maybe it was Sadie all along who had lost it. Placed it. Hidden it.

But that didn’t make sense. How had no one seen her leaving? No one had seen her at all, not that they were saying. Someone would’ve noticed her—how could you not? Greg Randolph, surely. And we would’ve seen her if she’d left through the back patio, walking down the path, heading toward the B&B parking lot.

But. The lights had gone out, the commotion on the patio. Ellie Arnold falling—or pushed—into the pool. She insisted she was pushed. She was adamant about it, furious that we didn’t believe her.

We had all moved to the back of the house then. Had been drawn to the scream, the chaos, like moths to a flame.